Canadiens goaltender Carey Price attempts to clear the puck off the boards, but ended up with a delay of game penalty against the Florida Panthers at the Bell Centre in Montreal on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2020.Photo by Dave Sidaway/ Montreal Gazette

Carey Price reached another milestone when he posted his 47th career shutout Saturday, but his teammates didn’t make it easy for him.

Price, who passed Ken Dryden for third place on the Canadiens all-time shutout list, faced only 12 shots in the first two periods of the 4-0 win over the Florida Panthers and only one — on a shorthanded breakaway by Jonathan Huberdeau — could be considered a scoring chance.

The third period was different. A string of penalties left the Canadiens shorthanded on four occasions.

“You don’t want to give up those opportunities, but everyone stepped up, blocked shots, got the puck all the way down and we were able to kill those off,” said defenceman Jeff Petry, whose analysis of the penalty-killing effort isn’t totally accurate.

Canadiens goaltender Carey Price attempts to clear the puck off the boards, but ended up with a delay of game penalty against the Florida Panthers at the Bell Centre in Montreal on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2020.Dave Sidaway

There’s a cliché that says your goaltender has to be your best penalty-killer and that was certainly the case in this game. The Panthers came to life in the third period. They fired 17 shots at Price and 12 of those came while Florida had the extra man.

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“It’s obviously special for him,” Petry said. “The last one (a 2-0 win over Calgary on Jan. 13) we all knew that he tied (Dryden). The final five minutes of this game I think everyone knew what he was about to accomplish, so that was something that we wanted to get for him but, obviously, it’s also a big win for us as a team.”

Prior to the game, Price collected the Molson Cup for the month of January. The award is based on the three star selections and the shutout wasn’t enough to earn him a mention Saturday. Petry, who assisted on all four goals, received the first star, while Nick Suzuki (a goal and an assist) and Artturi Lehkonen (one goal) were the other players honoured.

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When Price was asked about the last time he had a shutout and didn’t receive a star, he pointed to that Jan. 13 game.

“It’s pretty cool,” Price said. “It’s special to me because I had a conversation with Ken in my third season when things weren’t going so well and that helped me through it. I’m grateful for that. He told me to stick with trust in yourself.”

With the win, the Canadiens are six points out of a playoff spot, but they are chasing four or five teams for two spots and most of the teams ahead of them have games in hand.

The Panthers arrived in Montreal with one of the top offences in the NHL, but they might have been a tad rusty coming out of a bye week. They were playing for the first time since Jan. 21.

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“We had to play a strong defensive game for what they have offensively on that side,” Petry said. ”Our game play was to chip pucks in. They’re prone to turnovers when you’re putting the puck behind them and you’re pressuring them. I thought our forwards did a good job of that.”

The Canadiens raised some eyebrows when they sent rookie Cale Fleury and 19-year-old Jesperi Kotkaniemi to Lava, but coach Claude Julien said it was more important to focus on the players returning to the lineup.

A healthy Joel Armia has joined Ilya Kovalchuk and Suzuki on the No. 2 line and Brendan Gallagher has goals in each of the two games since he returned from a concession. The Canadiens are still waiting on Jonathan Drouin, but they have cleared a roster space for him.